Re: bidding advice for a contract

On Aug 5, 11:24 am, wes.tibu...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
As others have said, you might want to walk away from this. The last
time I saw this sort of situation (generalized requirements, short
timeframe for the features listed, lack of defined infrastructure), it
was put out to bid because the company had already chosen who they
wanted for the work, and their by-laws or some other constraint
required competitive bids.

Thanks for your input.

I know the other two guys bidding on the contract. The 'requirements'
were sent by email with copies to everyone, including those who
expressed an interest in bidding. To me, this is an indicator of the
inexperience of the client which facilitates collusion among the
bidders. I'm satisfied that this is a legitimate process to address a
serious problem.

Not saying that is what is happening here, as you say they have a good
reputation, but it is always a possibility and something you might
consider.

After reading these comments and talking with some other people, I'm
beginning to see some politics. The owner of the company is currently
on vacation during this process, and this effort is being headed up by
(essentially) third tier management, so I'm guessing he gave
instructions before he left and the instructees are making a valient
effort to complete the instructions before he returns. Hence the lack
of detailed requirements.

Further, even though the dates they indicate show a 6 week project,
they may skid on those requirements, and will not be likely to allow
you to skid on the deliverable. Each week you spend in development
might require a similar amount of time in documentation (Fully
documented is a red-flag term unless better defined in the
requirements), so this might be a rather ambitious project timeline
unless you already have a lot of experience in developing just what
they are looking for, and already have something on tap that you can
modify for their purposes.

I do this sort of thing for a living, already having a full time job,
so I have a substantial code base already. It's not like I'll be
writing this from scratch. Still, it's my experience that a project
like this will stretch over a period of years. The last project I did
similar to this one was in development for over two years, always in a
state of flux due to changing requirements, even though the first cut
was fully functional a week or two after I started.

If you want a prebuilt solution, use something like Access,
Quickbooks, etc. Buy it and adapt your business processes to the needs
of the software. You will have a working solution immediately. If you
want a custom solution that you can adapt to meet your business needs,
don't expect to have an immediate solution. One problem here might be
the desire to combine the benefits of a pre-built solution (immediacy)
with the benefits of a custom solution (customizability).

Remember? Good, fast, cheap: choose any two.

CC
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: pmj
    ... you have a fairly Confuzzled & unclear grasp of a lot of thoat sort ... Do sensible people *really* need to be told to read the Instructions? ... When people realise that buying & using a Computer (& the Internet) ... BTDTGTTS with one newbie who's pooter has spent more time ...
    (uk.people.silversurfers)
  • Re: New Instructions
    ... here's what I'd like Intel/AMD to do (are you ... sign-extended versions of move immediate (or fix MOVSX and MOVZX to ... And, while I'm at it, it would also be nice to have some instructions ... routine the stack is aligned, you know how much was allocated for locals, and ...
    (comp.arch)
  • Re: Intel 8086 opcodes
    ... comparison instructions; it is less true of immediate operands ... used with addition, subtraction, and comparison instructions; ...
    (comp.os.cpm)
  • RE: Separate Sort Order within same record
    ... "KARL DEWEY" wrote: ... Ascending or Descending in the Sort row remove the sort. ... give me step-by-step instructions, including what menu to go to, etc. to do ... The above will sort soundtracks at the top. ...
    (microsoft.public.access.reports)
  • Re: Learning assembly?
    ... Sort of instant assembly. ... (You can run the instructions in the ... ;-)) Very charming, for sure. ... the source editor, and then when you compile, the real compiler is handed ...
    (alt.lang.asm)